Despite what people in the comments section might say, the New York Times has one of the most elite editing staffs in the media. Editing is paramount to newspapers, mostly because there is no way to lose credibility faster than to use “effect” instead of “affect” or to leave a dangling modifier. And the editors serve a function more important than just making small grammar adjustments; they often are able to catch factual or structural errors that would otherwise be missed. Despite all of this, editors, and copyeditors especially, have been hit particularly hard by the changes in news media. Speed is becoming more important, and a larger portion of content is produced in video format.

Most recently, the Times public editor Liz Spayd wrote “A Hard Look at Times Editing in the Digital Era,” which reveals plans to make changes on the editorial side of the paper. The article makes clear that they value high-quality editing, but it is not particularly optimistic overall. One paragraph is particularly telling:

“The question is no longer whether the editing ranks will be squeezed. It is: How will it happen, when will it happen and how many positions will be lost?”

The Times has not yet laid out their full plans for rearranging the editing desk. There is just cause for this, as the news industry is indisputably different from how it was even 10 years ago. Still, it is a worrying prospect that perhaps speed will be prioritized over editing.

Despite all of this, copyediting will not disappear any time soon. For anyone interested in the field, CALA offers:

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Success in the increasingly competitive world of translation demands specialized knowledge and skill. This webinar, hosted by the American Translator’s Association (ATA), discusses the need for specialization and how to go about establishing yourself as an expert. Please find more information on the event below.

How do you break into the specialty market?

If you’ve thought about specialization but don’t know where to start,
this webinar is for you.

Examine the concrete benefits of specializing, then take a real-world look
at how a specialty practice works–the good, the bad, and the ugly. And
finally, learn how to evaluate your skills and experience to create an
action plan, including developing your own curriculum, working with a
partner, and finding opportunities for ad hoc learning.

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George Orwell’s 1984 was already climbing its way to the top of the charts when Kellyanne Conway’s “alternative facts” comment placed it securely in first place on Amazon’s best sellers list overnight. Explaining away Sean Spicer’s bald-faced lie – that President Trump’s swearing in drew the “largest audience to ever witness an inauguration” – as “alternative facts,” Conway sent us all reeling off into an alternative reality!

So, a week later, in New York alone, the public library system does not have one copy of 1984 to lend out – but there are long waiting lists across the five boroughs. In Queens, all 400 copies of Orwell’s dystopian novel are out on loan. Brooklyn’s 71 English-language copies are out, and Manhattan’s 326 English-language, and 40 Spanish translations have holds placed on them.

If you’re on the wait list the NYPL’s Readers Services team recommends: The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, Memory of Water by Emmi Itäranta, or The Sunlight Pilgrims by Jenni Fagan.

If you feel like you are already living the nightmare, or want a break from apocalyptic fiction, we have some great courses to offer you at CALA this spring. Click on the links below for information and to register.

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Donald Trump posing with Betsy DeVos, the current pick for Secretary of Education.

For most students, high school is not the end of education but a stepping stone to college. Ideally, then, high school would prepare everyone for the academic challenge of the college they attend. This is the very goal of the Common Core State Standards Initiative, which has been the subject of political controversy for years. Yet, according to a study by The Hechinger Report, over half a million students were enrolled in at least one remedial class in the last year alone. The study, titled “Most Colleges Enroll Many Students Who Aren’t Prepared for Higher Education,” found the majority of the colleges looked at accept students who need some form of remediation.

There are a number of factors at play here, but none of them completely excuse the failures of the U.S. primary and secondary education systems. For one, a number of first-time students are those not coming directly from high school, and thus it makes sense they may need refreshing. Still, this does not account for all of the students. The rates of remediation are higher at community colleges, so it may be tempting to write this off as a problem for lower-ranking colleges with open-door admission policies, but even in the various California State universities, “more than 40 percent of incoming freshman were deemed not ready for college-level work in at least one subject.” All in all, it points to a fundamental failure in a system that passes on its shortcomings to colleges and universities, which then have to catch up for students that were let down by their schools.

With Betsy DeVos, who is not a friend to the public school system, on track to become Secretary of Education, it is unlikely this situation will be repaired in the near future. Because of this, courses that promote professional writing and grammar are of utmost importance. Fortunately, the Center for Applied Liberal Arts has several offerings, including:

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Critics and fans alike agree that television has eclipsed film to become the premier form of visual entertainment, thereby entering a new golden age. This new renaissance is a direct result of the increased diversity of creators, writers, show runners, and actors working in the TV industry. Whether broadcast, cable, or online, “television” today is inching closer and closer to reflecting the true diversity of America. To highlight the increasing gender diversity in TV, Buzzfeed has published a list of 32 female creators who made great TV in 2016. So, at the end of one of the best years of TV in recent memory, we want to take a moment to thank Buzzfeed’s entire list of female creators—from Issa Rae to Ali Adler—for making TV great again.

If you’re interested in writing for TV, check out our Professional Diploma in Writing for Television. Applications are due January 4th!

Chaired by Michael C. Vazquez, this event shines a spotlight on pathways linking pivotal journals such as Transition, Drum, Black Images, Joe, Staffrider and Black Orpheus to current trends in African and African diasporic book publishing, pathways marked by an enduring fidelity to print – an expanded and increasingly hybrid entity – as a means of exchanging ideas.

At the same time, where bookshops and independent publishers such as New Beacon and Bogle L’Ouverture in London, Presence Africaine in Paris or Third World Press in Chicago once flourished as hubs for political and intellectual thought, the digital mediascape now provides unprecedented space and means – utilised by the likes of Chimurenga, Kwani?, Farafina, Brittle Paper and Jalada – to raise unpopular voices and form complex communities of writers and readers.

EMMANUEL IDUMA, born and raised in Nigeria, is a writer and art critic. He is the author of the novel The Sound of Things To Come and co-editor of Gambit: Newer African Writing. He has contributed essays on art and photography to a number of journals, magazines and exhibition catalogues, including Guernica, ARTNews, and The Trans-African. He co-founded and directs Saraba magazine.

MADHU KRISHNAN is Assistant Professor of 20th/ 21st-Century Postcolonial Writing at the University of Bristol, author of Contemporary African Literature in English: Global Locations, Postcolonial Identifications (2014), and has published – in journals such as Textual Practice and Comparative Literature Studies – a number of articles on the intersection between aesthetics, socio-political interventions and cultural materialism. She is guest editor of forthcoming issues of Research In African Literatures and Wasafiri.

SHAUN RANDOL is the publisher and editor in chief of The Mantle which he founded in 2009. He is also the co-editor of Gambit: Newer African Writing, a fellow at the World Policy Institute in New York City, and a member of the National Book Critics Circle and the PEN American Center.

MICHAEL C. VAZQUEZ is a Detroit-born, New York-based writer, editor and curator. Senior Editor at Bidoun: Art and Culture from the Middle East and former editor of Transition: An International Review, he is writing a book on, among other things, African print cultures of the Cold War era.

Bravo Steve McQueen! From the London Film Festival 2016, Vanessa Thorpe writes for The Guardian:It was the culmination of a film festival that attempted to correct a bias against celebrating black screen talent: Steve McQueen, the film-maker, screenwriter and Turner prizewinning artist, was awarded the British Film Institute fellowship on Saturday. … McQueen is the first black director or producer to receive the film industry honour. …

“As winner of both the Turner prize and an Academy Award, Steve is pre-eminent in the world of film and the moving image. He is one of the most influential and important British artists of the past 25 years and his work, both short and long form, has consistently explored the endurance of humanity – even when it is confronted by inhumane cruelty – with a poetry and visual style that he has made his own,” said Josh Berger, chairman of the BFI.

“We are thrilled that Steve has become a BFI fellow.”

Before striking Oscar gold in 2014, McQueen, 47, stepped nimbly between the world of art to the world of film with his acclaimed 2008 first feature Hunger, which won the Camera d’Or at the Cannes film festival and many other international prizes. (Full story here)

CALA’s Second Foreign Film Series, Political Landscapes: A View from Abroad, features Steve McQueen’s Hunger on Friday, November 4, at Ireland House. McQueen’s longtime collaborator and friend, Irish actor Michael Fassbinder, plays IRA man Bobby Sands in the film. Moderated by CALA’s Michael Zam, this screening is currently full but we have a waiting list – click here to add your name via the RSVP link because there will be cancellations.

The first film of the series, Blackboards (Iran), was screened on Monday, October 17. Directed in 2000 by Samira Makhmalbaf (who was a mere 20-years-old at the time), it is a film to put on your “must see” list. Perhaps we will run a “best of” series one of these semesters.

In the meantime, except for the powerful Hunger, all of the other scheduled movies have seats available. Take a look at the line-up hereand RSVP to reserve your seat.

CNN is one of the news organizations that has increased its fact-checking this year.

Journalists are often considered the defenders of truth. Despite this, though, fact-checking has really only entered the mainstream in the past decade. It could simply be that before the internet and the 24-hour news cycle, people trusted that people were going to tell the truth as much as possible. The 2016 election has shown that this is not necessarily the case. Perhaps the greatest cause for the rise of fact-checking is that it’s reassuring to think that politicians cannot simply lie and get away with it anymore.

The article also mentions that Graves and Wagner are launching a course this month at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, which will create a new fact-checking site called The Observatory. But, if you happen to want to take a course about this but don’t go to UWM, the Center for Applied Liberal Arts offers Research and Fact-Checking. The class is online and self-paced, and it covers everything you could want to know about fact-checking. And if we keep getting candidates like the ones this year, you will definitely want to know about fact-checking.